On Friday a spokesman for the European Commission’s antitrust watchdog said it had taken note of the FTC decision but it had no “direct implications” for its investigation, which began in 2010.

Thomas Vinje, a Brussels-based lawyer for Fairsearch.org, which represents Microsoft and other companies pushing for antitrust action against Google, said in an interview Friday that while “Google has done a good job of keeping the emotional temperature down” in its dealings with the European Commission, authorities there have “identified practices that could be deemed illegal, and which the FTC walked away from.”

They key Google practice at issue is what Vinje calls “search manipulation,” cases where they say Google promotes links to its own specialized websites in its search-engine results over links to non-Google sites. Those specialized websites include its Google+ Local business listings and travel-search service.

EU Competition Commissioner Joaquín Almunia, who last year expressed concern about the practice, among other issues, “has put his credibility on the line in a public way, so he’s not going to walk away from this without something serious,” Vinje said.

The European Commission spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Almunia said the agency would work with Google to test specific remedies for such concerns in the market before Google agrees to a binding commitment. Mr. Vinje said Fairsearch was told by the commission that it could be involved in helping to evaluate such a market test.

In general, European officials are expected to extract more extensive and binding commitments from the company as part of any legal settlement there, as they face fewer constraints on their antitrust authority. Also, Google has an even larger market share in Web search in Europe than in the U.S.